Deep brain stimulation

Deep brain stimulation

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? While this episode isn't about alcohol directly, it digs into something central to addiction, depression and other mental health struggles: the human brain itself. All In The Mind follows Peter Raymond, who’s lived with Parkinson’s disease for over a decade and chose to undergo deep brain stimulation (DBS).

You’ll hear Peter describe, with understated humour, what it was like to be awake while surgeons drilled into his skull and asked him to recite “Mary had a little lamb” to check his facial expression and movement. At one point he jokes that his face contorted "a bit like Jim Carrey", prompting the team to adjust the probe by a couple of millimetres.

Clinical neuroscientist Professor Peter Silburn explains DBs in everyday language, likening the brain to a giant telephone exchange and the electrodes to switches that can "turn that electricity up and down". He’s clear that the exact mechanism isn’t fully understood, but the effects can be dramatic: tremors easing in real time on the operating table, stiffness softening, and people regaining basic functions like feeding and dressing themselves.

The conversation widens out to future possibilities, with DBs already being investigated for addiction, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia. Psychiatrist Professor Colleen Liu questions why DBs is banned for psychiatric use in parts of Australia, sharing the story of a young man with severe depression who had to travel to India for treatment and is now well and working. The tone is scientific yet very human, blending clear explanations with lived experience.

If you’re interested in how brain-based treatments might reshape care for conditions from Parkinson’s to addiction and severe depression, this episode raises big questions with real-life stories to match. Could understanding our "deep inner space" change how we think about recovery itself?